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NEW DELHI: Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi received China’s top diplomat on Tuesday, as the Asian powers resumed disputed border talks after years of tensions.

The neighbors and the world’s two most populous countries have been locked in a standoff triggered by deadly clashes along their Himalayan border, known as the Line of Actual Control, in 2020.

Tens of thousands of troops, tanks, and artillery have since been deployed on both sides of the LAC, with both countries building new roads, bunkers, and airstrips in the high-altitude area.

Despite multiple rounds of military and diplomatic engagements, friction points remained, with India restricting Chinese investments, banning dozens of Chinese apps, and scrutinizing trade ties, as it deepened relations with Beijing’s rivals — the US, Japan, and Australia.

But a recent disruption caused earlier this month by US President Donald Trump’s trade war, in which he unexpectedly hiked the total duty on Indian exports to 50 percent, has created an opening for the Asian powers to seek to repair ties.

Wang Yi, China’s foreign minister, arrived in New Delhi for a three-day visit on Monday.

Ahead of meeting Modi, he held talks with his counterpart, S. Jaishankar, who told him in his welcome speech that after a “difficult period” in bilateral relations, the “two nations now seek to move ahead.”

Jaishankar said the visit would cover economic and trade issues, including cross-border trade, as well as people-to-people contacts.

Wang also met India’s National Security Adviser Ajit Doval for the 24th round of talks to discuss de-escalation of border tensions, and said he was ready to work with India “to build more consensus and identify the direction, the specific goals of the boundary consultations going forward, and create more conditions for the improvement and further growth” of bilateral relations.

A thaw between India and China began last year, when Modi and Chinese President Xi Jinping held their first bilateral meeting in five years at a summit of BRICS nations in Russia’s Kazan.

They are expected to meet again later this month as Modi will visit China for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. This will be the Indian prime minister’s first official trip to China in over six years.

 

“Both are moving gradually to try and normalize a relationship. If you go back to October last year when Prime Minister Modi met President Xi Jinping, you saw the beginnings of some sort of an effort towards normalization,” Manoj Kewalramani, chairperson of the Indo-Pacific Research Program and a China studies fellow at the Takshashila Institution, told Arab News.

But after years of freeze, change is not likely to happen immediately.

Kewalramani expects that as the two countries resume talks, they would be followed by more engagements at the levels of commerce, finance, industry and technology ministers.

“We can start to build on areas where there are commonalities and shared interests that would inject some sort of stability not only into the relationship but also into the geopolitics of the region,” he said.

“One can argue that the disruption that Donald Trump has caused has led to some degree of urgency, but I don’t think you’re going to see an overnight change in the relationship. I think what you are going to see is a slow, cautious, calibrated effort by both sides to try and arrive at some sort of a new equilibrium.”

MOGADISHU: Diphtheria cases and deaths have risen sharply this year in Somalia, where the response has been curtailed by vaccine shortages and US aid cuts, Somali officials said.
More than 1,600 cases, including 87 deaths, have been recorded, up from 838 cases and 56 deaths in all of 2024, said Hussein Abdukar Muhidin, the general director of Somalia’s National Institute of Health.
Diphtheria, a bacterial disease that causes swollen glands, breathing problems and fever and mostly affects children, is preventable with a vaccine that became widely available in the mid-20th century.
Childhood immunization rates in Somalia have improved over the past decade, but hundreds of thousands of children are still not fully vaccinated.
After fleeing fighting between government forces and Islamist militants in the central Somalia town of Ceeldheere three months ago, all four of Deka Mohamed Ali’s children, none of whom was vaccinated, contracted diphtheria. Her 9-year-old daughter recovered, but her 8-year-old son died and two toddlers are now being treated at a hospital in the capital Mogadishu.
“My children got sick and I just stayed at home because I did not know it was diphtheria,” she told Reuters from the bedside of her 3-year-old son Musa Abdullahi whose throat was swollen to the size of a lemon from the infection.
Health Minister Ali Hajji Adam said the government had struggled to procure enough vaccines due to a global shortage and that US aid cuts were making it difficult to distribute the doses it had.
Before President Donald Trump cut most foreign assistance earlier this year, the United States was the leading humanitarian donor to Somalia, whose health budget is almost entirely funded by donors.
“The US aid cut terribly affected the health funds it used to provide to Somalia. Many health centers closed. Mobile vaccination teams that took vaccines to remote areas lost funding and now do not work,” said Adam.
Muhidin separately echoed his comments about the closures.
Overall US foreign assistance commitments to Somalia stand at $149 million for the fiscal year that ends on September 30, compared with $765 million in the previous fiscal year, according to US government statistics.
“The United States continues to provide lifesaving foreign assistance in Somalia,” a US State Department spokesperson said when asked about the impact of its aid cuts in the country.
“America is the most generous nation in the world, and we urge other nations to dramatically increase their humanitarian efforts.”
Aid group Save the Children said last month that the closure of hundreds of health clinics in Somalia this year due to foreign cuts has contributed to a doubling in the number of combined cases of diphtheria, measles, whooping cough, cholera and severe respiratory infections since mid-April.
Besides the US, Britain, France, Germany and other major Western donors are also cutting aid budgets.
Somalia’s government has also faced criticism from doctors and human rights activists for its limited funding of the health sector. In 2024, it allocated 4.8 percent of its budget to health, down from 8.5 percent the previous year, Amnesty International said.
The health ministry did not respond to a question about that criticism. It has said it is planning to launch a vaccination drive but has not given details when.